E49 - Raymond Maisano at Cloudflare

On this episode, we’re joined by James Dean, the Director of Telecoms here at Hamilton Barnes and Raymond Maisano, the Head of Australia, and New Zealand at Cloudflare. Raymond discusses his journey into the industry, with an unexpected start and touches more on who Cloudflare are and what they stand for.

Raymond’s starting point, like many others, was at university, but not in a degree you would expect. He studied Economics and Accounting and after his first year, he knew that he couldn’t possibly do that as a career. One of the subjects during the 2^nd semester was Computer Accounting and he realised his affinity for technology really came out in that subject. He decided to take a gap year to have a sense of what he wanted to do. Coming back to university after a year, he moved degrees into Computer Science and Applied Science and that’s ultimately where his journey began.

He moved into a Technical Support role coming out of university at BHP. He spent a few years there and became one of the architects, running the strategy and architecture. He moved to VMware after a few years to run the Network and Security business and then jumped into Cloudflare where he is today.

His background in Economics helped him massively and had a huge impact on his career. It allowed him to really look at the analytics of not just why you do something. It is easy to get into technology and think this is a great answer but if you cannot put the business analytics around it then you have to ask why you are doing it in the first place.

Jumping into different positions, the transitional period was something he enjoyed. He shares that he inherently loves the problem-solving aspect of the industry and finding ways to help solve challenges. If you have a curiosity about yourself and a mindset of continuous learning, then why wouldn’t you enjoy the transition?

More on Cloudflare…

Cloudflare is a Cyber Security company with a mission to make the internet better. The internet was not designed with security at its core and Cloudflare is just focusing on helping solve those security gaps and improving the performance, delivery, and security for all their customers.

Some of the challenges they are facing is building out the platform into 250 points of presence across one hundred cities in ten countries across the world. Additionally, building the capacity to run that computer is something they are trying to keep on top of.

At Cloudflare, when he is looking for new hires, it is important to them that they do not box themselves off to hiring just Network people and Security people. It is important to understand that everyone makes the company better in each role they come from. What he says to most people is to have tenacity, love to problem solve, continuously learn and for them to have a mindset of ‘there’s a better way to do this, why are you still doing it this way?.’ The non-negotiables one needs to have to join his team is the ability to be insightful with how you look at problems and having a passion for customers. “If your north star isn’t around helping customers then I think there’s a challenge.” Also having a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box. When people come from different backgrounds and have different lenses on the same problem as opposed to all going through the same education and the same path, it will ultimately end up resulting in the same answer.

Raymond walks us through some of his proudest achievements since starting in this industry and it revolves around how important building out a team is. Make sure you tune in now to hear the full episode!